8" Oak Smoothing Plane

Hello. This is my second wood handplane I’ve made. Its an 8” smoothing plane with a white oak body and walnut wedge. I have a 2” wide blade from LeeValley. I had milled the wood for the body on a Friday evening, and on Saturday did the cutting on the centre block, made the crosspin and assembled and glued it together, which took only a few hours. And on Sunday took a few hours to shape, flatten the sole, and make the wedge and I had a working handplane. So it doesn’t take very long to make one of these planes and its satisfying using a plane you made to work on other projects. I have another 2” blade and a 1 3/4” blade and a 1 1/2” blade for a scrub plane which I already made. The great thing with making your own planes is you can buy only a few blades with different sizes and make as many bodies as you want for different purposes and swap the blades out. I plan on making another smoother with a higher bed angle, a foreplane, jointer, and another scrub plane without the handle I have on the one I already made. I will probably do a step-by-step project build on one of the next planes I make.

-- And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord... Colossians 3:23

It works well on lightly figured wood but I tried it on a highly figured piece of quilted maple but it tore the grain. I made another plane the same with a 62 degree bed angle and it got better results on the maple but still some tear out.

-- And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord... Colossians 3:23